With Nature

Researchers tracked a prescribed grassland fire using infrasound, sound waves pitched too low for people to hear.
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Ancient mammals may have had an easier time moving across the Isthmus of Panama from north to south thanks to Mexico’s climate.
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Dietary arginine reduces tumor formation and viral load in mice by boosting key immune proteins.
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A canopy call, a partial photo and DNA revealed a new primate species — one that may already be at risk of extinction.
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Women who received treatment for autoimmune diseases with CAR T cell therapy went on to have regular pregnancies and healthy babies.
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Surfer, spear-fisher and free-diver Riley Elliott and marine biologist, shark diver and underwater photographer Kori Burkhardt put themselves in harm's way in don't-try-this-at-home "Shark Week" 2026 special "Secrets of the Great White Kill", and Live Science is here with all the TV and streaming details. How to watch "Secrets of the Great White Kill" — Quick Guide► Date: Friday, July 31 at 8 p.m. ET/PT► TV: Discovery (US)► Stream: YouTube TV / DirecTV / Hulu + Live TV / HBO Max► Watch anywhere: Get 85% off SurfsharkIt doesn't always go to plan, as this seal uprising and vengeful turtle demonstrate, but great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) are known for attacking prey from below with such frightening speed and power it can propel their enormous bodies clear out of the water and stun or even kill their prey upon impact.However, closer inspection has revealed that they can be a little more subtle when the need arises In "Secrets of the Great White Kill," Eliott and Burkhardt aim to capture and unpack the full range of great white hunting techniques, including one or two surprising methods, the nuances of which have never been fully appreciated before.How to watch "Secrets of the Great White Kill" in the U.S."Secrets of the Great White Kill" airs on Discovery at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Friday, July 31. If you don't have the Discovery channel on cable, it's available on a streaming basis from several cable alternatives. Best of all, many of the services offer a free trial to new customers.YouTube TV usually costs $82.99 per month but comes with a free trial and $15 off each of your first five months.The DirecTV MyEntertainment genre pack costs $42.99 per month after a 5-day free trial, and Hulu + Live TV costs $89.99 per month after a 3-day free trial.Alternatively, the HBO Max streaming service starts at $10.99 per month. Can you watch "Secrets of the Great White Kill" in the U.K.?"Shark Week" programming typically airs on Discovery+ in the U.K. at a later date.At the time of publication, plans for "Secrets of the Great White Kill" and the other 2026 specials are still firmly under wraps.If you're currently in the U.K. for work or on vacation from the U.S., you can still catch "Secrets of the Great White Kill" by using a VPN, such as Surfshark.Watch "Secrets of the Great White Kill" from anywhereIf you're travelling abroad you can access your usual streaming services from anywhere with a good VPN.A VPN, or virtual private network, is a piece of internet security software that can alter your device's digital location, unlocking the geo-restrictions on most streaming platforms.Our expert colleagues at TechRadar rate Surfshark as one of the best VPNs. Not only is it great for unblocking streaming services, it has top-level security features, a reasonable price tag and, right now, a big discount.Save 85% off Surfshark VPNLive Science x Surfshark Exclusive "Shark Week" DealWhether you're tuning into Discovery's Shark Week or diving deep into the web, privacy matters. Surfshark keeps your connection encrypted and your data out of sight – no matter what waters you're navigating.Protect unlimited devices for just $2.39/mo + 4 Extra Months. Save 85%! Shark Week Special runs from July 26 to August 1, 2026.🥇 From $2.39 per month✅ Block ads, trackers, scams, and malware🤝 30-day money-back guarantee🏆 4 Extra monthsView DealWe test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.
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Scientists at IBM and partner institutions say they've reached "quantum advantage" in a trio of experiments demonstrating quantum computing capabilities that even the fastest classical supercomputers can't match.In a purported major milestone for quantum computing, the experiments show how these machines could perform useful computational tasks, such as computing chemical reactions, within minutes. By comparison, a supercomputer would take years. In a statement, IBM representatives said these experiments show that quantum computers can provide trusted solutions more efficiently, more cheaply or more accurately than any classical computing method.Trust and verificationAt a July 28 news conference, representatives from IBM, Algorithmiq, Qedma, and the University of Chicago described three experiments demonstrating quantum advantage over classical computers in three different challenges. Each used IBM's Quantum Heron R3 superconducting quantum computer system running novel error mitigation techniques. The experiments focused on both demonstrating and verifying quantum advantage. The first study, conducted in partnership with Qedma, investigated the Floquet transverse-field Ising model, a system physicists use to study how a material's magnetic properties evolve when rhythmically driven by external pulses. This is an extremely difficult problem for classical computers because the model's math becomes exponentially more difficult to process as the problem scales. Scientists published the study, which has not been peer-reviewed, on the arXiv preprint server July 27.But quantum computers can perform deeper computations using the Floquet transverse-field Ising model than their classical counterparts due to quirks of quantum mechanics that allow quantum bits (qubits) to represent not just the 1s and 0s of binary data but also a superposition of the two values, so that calculations can run in parallel.When physicists use a classical supercomputer to run the model ‪—‬ in this case, the Fugaku supercomputer in Kobe, Japan ‪—‬ they have some trust that the results will be computed correctly and without significant error. Quantum computers, by contrast, are far more prone to error. They're extremely sensitive to any form of noise, including interference from Earth's magnetic field. One of the chief challenges in quantum computing is finding ways to mitigate the errors caused by this noise.Scientists can compare a classical supercomputer's results with those of a quantum computer using the Floquet transverse-field Ising model, but only to a certain point. When the classical computer reaches the limit of its ability to compute complex problems, the quantum computer still has plenty of runway left. But, as IBM principal research scientist Abhinav Kandala explained in an interview with Live Science, the problem lies in trusting the results. These experiments were powered by IBM's Quantum Heron R3 superconducting quantum computer system. (Image credit: IBM)"You want to perform computations that outperform classical, right? But you've relied on classical results for the longest time," he said. "So when you now begin to outperform, or you go beyond classical, how do you know you had the right result? This is a question that's independent of application. For any computation that you want to do, you want to [ask], 'OK, is this really something that I can trust?"The experiment was designed to create a trusted stack that essentially allowed scientists to verify the quantum computer's results. They used Qedma's quantum error suppression and error mitigation (QESEM) software to provide consistent results, and then compared those results against the Fugaku supercomputer's.Once the results matched, they cranked up the difficulty until the classical computer could not keep up. Then, to replicate the results, they brought in additional quantum computers.The team ran the same experiment on multiple quantum computers. To ensure they were getting enough errors to test the error mitigation strategy, Kandala said, they purposely injected each system with different levels of artificial noise and corruption. "We measured the same circuit on five different quantum computers," Kandala told Live Science, including a superconducting quantum computer from IBM Boston and another at IBM Pittsburgh.They also ran the experiments on two of Quantinuum's quantum computers, using the same error mitigation techniques. In each measurement, the noise and corruption injected into the system was different, but the computational results were consistent. Quantum building blocksIn the second experiment, conducted by IBM and Algorithmiq, researchers applied the Floquet transverse-field Ising model to a different set of problems and used a different method for error mitigation. As the researchers scaled the problem on both the classical and quantum computers, the classical systems began to produce inconsistent results. The quantum systems, by contrast, maintained consistency at measured intervals, thus demonstrating verifiable outputs, the team reported in a preprint paper posted to arXiv July 28.The third study, uploaded to arXiv July 28 and conducted in partnership with the University of Chicago, approached quantum advantage from a different angle. Researchers designed a system of "Clifford gates," a type of circuit that is intentionally easy for classical computers to simulate. Then, they made the circuits progressively harder for classical systems to solve by injecting them with more difficult gates called T gates. The nature of the experiment allowed physicists to guarantee error mitigation at complexities beyond what a classical supercomputer could handle. Any computations run through the circuit ‪—‬ even those that would be impossible for a classical computer ‪—‬ would be trustworthy by design. RELATED STORIESScientists trained an AI model using an IBM quantum computer — and it answered questions correctly that the base model couldn'tNew chip harnesses quantum computing's biggest weakness — and tries to turn it into a strengthBreakthrough in experimental light-powered quantum computers could mean scaling them up is now far more viable Based on these three technical papers and other press information provided by IBM, it appears that each of the experiments demonstrated a clear quantum advantage over classical computers. Whether it will stay that way, however, remains to be seen.There have been numerous reports of laboratories achieving "quantum supremacy," "quantum utility" and "quantum advantage" over the past few years — each, essentially, claiming to have surpassed the abilities of classical computing. However, most of those achievements ended up being topped. It isn't possible for physicists to imagine every possible mathematical method for conducting classical computations when they test quantum computers against state-of-the-art supercomputers.IBM and its partners said they expect classical computer scientists to try disproving their claims. "The classical back-and-forth ‪—‬ that'll keep going on, I think," Kandala said. "And that should; that's how science progresses. And that's precisely [why we have] the Quantum Advantage Tracker, a benchmark for measuring quantum advantage. "A lot of these problems have been on the tracker for a while now," Kandala said, "and I'm sure getting the papers out will get more eyes on it."
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LONDON ‪—‬ New blood tests for Alzheimer's disease aim to catch the condition in its earliest stages. Scientists hope that, someday, by spotting very early signs of dementia and enabling earlier treatments, these tests could significantly improve patients' prognoses.But how well do current blood tests work for that purpose? At the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in London on July 12-15, Live Science spoke with researchers and clinicians who study and use blood tests for Alzheimer's disease. Here's their take on the current state of these tests and their practicality for real-world useScientists' big hopes for the testsPeople diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease face an incurable condition, but their outlook is marginally more hopeful than it was 10 years ago. That's because the first "disease-modifying" drugs for Alzheimer's, which target the disease's causes rather than its symptoms, have been approved in recent years. These drugs, which include the lab-made antibodies lecanemab and donanemab, only slow, rather than stop, the progression of the disease. However, researchers hope these medicines could be the precursors to more effective treatments. Alzheimer's disease researchers hotly debate the exact causes of the condition, but they are united on the idea that early intervention is likely to produce the best possible outcome for patients. The aim is to remove disease-linked proteins before they can damage the brain. That's why new blood tests for Alzheimer's disease, some of which have been approved in the past year, are exciting so many scientists. These tests, which measure chemical signals of the disease circulating through the bloodstream, are currently paired with other clinical exams to provide an accurate Alzheimer's diagnosis for patients with early symptoms, such as subtle changes to memory or personality. The hope is that if these patients could be identified at this stage, they could access clinical trials and treatments when they might be the most helpful. New blood tests for Alzheimer's can help patients get diagnosed earlier, which experts think could help boost the degree to which treatments help them. (Image credit: Iparraguirre Recio via Getty Images)What do Alzheimer's blood tests measure? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved two blood tests for Alzheimer's disease: Roche's Elecsys pTau181 assay and Fujirebio's Lumipulse G pTau217/ß-Amyloid 1-42 Plasma Ratio test. An additional test from Roche (the Elecsys pTau217 test) has received a basic safety certification in the European Union and U.K., which allows it to be sold but is not equivalent to FDA approval. This test is not approved in the U.S. yet. A second test from Fujirebio (the Lumipulse G pTau 217 Plasma assay) is in the same boat.Plus, there are a host of other tests made in specific clinical laboratories; these are not FDA-approved but they are available in certain specialist clinics. All of these tests in varying stages of approval measure "a core part of the pathology of Alzheimer's disease in the brain," said Dr. Sebastian Palmqvist, a clinical neurologist at Lund University in Sweden. These include two proteins that build up in the brains of Alzheimer's patients: tau and amyloid. The Elecsys tests and the FDA-approved Lumipulse test measure levels of tau in the blood, while the other Lumipulse test measures the ratio of tau to amyloid. Both measurements can be used to indirectly assess the presence of amyloid plaques, sticky deposits in the brain that are associated with the disease's progression. It's important to note that the blood tests alone aren't diagnostics for Alzheimer's disease, said Dr. Jemma Hazan, an old-age psychiatrist at University College London. Instead, "the test is telling you whether you have certain abnormal proteins in your brain." This, she said, makes it important to use the test in a setting where patients can be properly directed to the next steps of diagnosis and treatment.How are Alzheimer's disease blood tests used?Currently in the U.S., Alzheimer's blood tests are approved for use only for adults ages 55 and older who have signs of cognitive impairment, like memory problems. Palmqvist said these tests are best used by specialists with knowledge of dementia, such as doctors in memory clinics. They aren't approved for use by primary care doctors in the U.S. "The clinicians working there [at memory clinics] have many, many years of experience of interpreting these types of biomarkers," he explained. Before the advent of these blood tests, memory clinics had to rely solely on expensive brain scanning technology or invasive lumbar punctures to identify physical signs of Alzheimer's disease. The new tests greatly simplify diagnosis, Palmqvist said, but they still need to be used in combination with other tests. So currently, if a patient receives a positive blood test, they must undergo further cognitive testing, brain scans or invasive biomarker analyses to confirm the diagnosis. While for now the blood tests are best used by specialists, data that Palmqvist presented at the conference suggested that access to a blood test result may improve a primary care physician’s diagnostic accuracy to levels closer to a memory clinic specialist's. That hints that the test may eventually be usable in primary care, without more invasive diagnostics.The blood tests look for Alzheimer's-related proteins, including tau and amyloid, which form tangles in the brains of patients with the condition. (Image credit: wildpixel via Getty Images)How well do the approved Alzheimer's tests work?In clinical trials, the approved Lumipulse test had a sensitivity of 97.6% and a specificity of 90.8%. Sensitivity refers to the percentage of people who do have amyloid in their brains that test positive — so it's the rate of true positives. Specificity refers to the percentage of healthy people who test negative, meaning true negatives. However, the test was recalled in February because it returned an unusually high percentage of false-positive results when it was used in the real world, compared to clinical trials. Palmqvist said there's now a newer version of the same test that avoids this problem. Analyses comparing pTau217 and pTau181, the two tau biomarkers that Roche uses in its tests, have concluded that pTau217 is a more accurate indicator of Alzheimer's disease. That means it more closely matches results from gold-standard amyloid brain scans. Dr. Ashton Harper, global medical affairs lead for neurosciences at Roche Diagnostics, said the Roche pTau217 test correctly spotted Alzheimer's-linked proteins 96.1% of the time and accurately ruled out that pathology 94.7% of the time in trials. By comparison, pTau181 — the Roche test approved in the U.S. — correctly identified Alzheimer's pathology 83.6% of the time and ruled out pathology in healthy brains 72.2% of the time.Patients who take this more-accurate test are given one of three possible results based on two cutoff points, Harper said. If their tau level comes back above the upper cutoff — giving a positive result — clinicians can be "highly certain" that the patient has disease-linked amyloid in their brain, he said.Below the lower of the two cutoffs, clinicians can be confident that their patient doesn't have any disease-linked amyloid in their brain. If the reading comes back in between the two cutoffs, though, the result is uncertain.Someday, the blood tests could help flag patients in the earliest stages of Alzheimer's before they show any symptoms, scientists hope. (Image credit: stefanamer via Getty Images)Current guidelines set by the Alzheimer’s Association require that patients end up in that gray area no more than 20% of the time, and the pTau217 test meets that requirement, Harper said. As with patients who get a positive test result, patients who receive these uncertain results are also advised to undergo further testing, such as scans or cognitive tests. There are other reasons a person without Alzheimer's disease might get a positive test result; rare cases of severe kidney disease, for example, can artificially inflate the test's readings. Harper said early data suggests that Roche's pTau217 test is roughly as accurate at detecting Alzheimer's disease proteins in cognitively unimpaired people as it is in those with symptoms. This may someday open the door to prevent Alzheimer's in patients who have not yet developed symptoms, he suggested, clarifying that Roche's test is not intended for that use yet. How do Alzheimer's tests actually affect patients' care?In the U.S., these tests can help patients get a diagnosis more quickly, but treatment options for the condition remain limited. The approved antibody drugs are available through both private and government insurers, but they still cost the patient thousands of dollars each month. And again, these drugs only slow, rather than stop, the progression of the disease. Researchers hope that early treatment with the drugs will enhance their effectiveness, but as of yet, there's no published data to back this idea up. Diagnostic accuracy is important in its own right so that people feel more certain about the diagnosis and also there are management implications.Dr. Jemma Hazan, an old-age psychiatrist at University College LondonIn the U.K., disease-modifying drugs like the antibodies have not been approved by the U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS) yet. Because the drugs only modestly slow Alzheimer's progression, ultimately, the NHS determined that they were too costly to cover without clearer signs of efficacy. That means British patients cannot access the drug for free. Still, Hazan said a positive test could be beneficial for patients. "Diagnostic accuracy is important in its own right so that people feel more certain about the diagnosis and also there are management implications," Hazan said. While they can't access antibody drugs, patients do have access to drugs that help ease the condition's cognitive and behavioral symptoms, as well as non-pharmacological treatments like behavior management. Diagnosed patients can also access one of the many clinical trials for the condition. It's estimated that 50,000 patients are needed to populate these ongoing trials worldwide.Related storiesSingle protein could dramatically alter trajectory of Alzheimer's diseaseAlzheimer's comes in at least 5 distinct forms, study revealsA gene carried by 99% of humanity raises Alzheimer's risk dramatically. Could gene therapy correct it?Hazan and Palmqvist agreed that, despite the blood tests' accuracy, they should not be used to preventively screen for Alzheimer's in people with no symptoms. That's because testing in a wider population, where fewer people will have Alzheimer's disease, naturally increases the number of false-positive results, even while the assay itself retains the same level of accuracy. This could lead many healthy people to be incorrectly diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, which would cause stress for patients and have significant financial implications for healthcare systems. Newer tests that are still in development may help reduce the likelihood of false positives by measuring only a subset of tau protein that comes directly from the brain rather than from the rest of the body, Palmqvist said. But for now, mass screening remains a goal, rather than a reality, for these blood-based Alzheimer's diagnostics. "I think that's the next frontier," Palmqvist said. This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice. See how much you know about the most complex organ in the human body with our brain quiz!
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Science word of the day: CovalentPronunciation: Coh-VAY'-lentWhat it means: In chemistry, a covalent bond occurs when two atoms share a pair of electrons. Electrons zip around atomic nuclei at different energy levels, or "shells." An atom fills its shells with electrons starting from the lowest-energy shell to the highest-energy one, which is called the valence shell. Valence-shell electrons can interact with the valence shells of other atoms. When two atoms get close enough, their valence electrons can feel the pull from both nuclei at once, binding the two atoms together into a stable molecule.How to use it in a sentence: When atoms share electrons in a covalent bond, they form some of the most stable bonds in chemistry ‪—‬ which is good news, because these bonds are also the basis of most organic molecules and organisms, including you. Can you crack our science word of the day puzzle, Chain Word?
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Astronomers may have just found a first-of-its-kind phenomenon buried in the shadow of one of the Milky Way's most famous stellar explosions: two stars that died in separate supernovas, after spending millions of years orbiting each other.Using 16 years of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, researchers detected high-energy gamma rays coming from a faint, previously overlooked supernova remnant called G189.6+3.3, which sits right beside the well-studied remnant IC 443 (nicknamed the Jellyfish Nebula). Their analysis suggests that the two remnants aren't just neighbors by coincidence. Instead, they may be the leftover wreckage of a binary star system, making this the first confirmed case of two supernova remnants traced to the same stellar pair. The findings were published July 21 in the journal Nature Communications."We weren't really looking for a binary supernova remnant," study first author Miltiadis Michailidis, an astrophysicist and postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, told Live Science. The team originally set out to characterize G189.6+3.3, which had long been overshadowed by its brighter neighbor. IC 443 is one of the best-studied remnants in the galaxy and among the first ever confirmed to accelerate protons — one of the key ingredients thought to produce cosmic rays, the high-energy particles that constantly strike Earth's atmosphere.By combining Fermi's gamma-ray data with X-ray, radio, ultraviolet and optical observations, the team teased out G189.6+3.3's faint signal and found something strange: Instead of glowing uniformly, its northern half was dominated by accelerated protons, while its southern half was dominated by electrons. It's the first time such a clean split has been spotted within a single remnant. The explanation, they found, came down to the environment: The northern edge of the remnant presses against a dense cloud of hydrogen gas, which gives fast-moving protons something to collide with, thereby producing gamma rays, Michailidis said. The southern half lacks that dense material, letting a different, electron-driven process take over instead. Ultraviolet observations showed that the northern shock wave had slowed after slamming into the cloud, backing up that interpretation.A dense cloud of hydrogen gas helped astronomers uncover clues that two neighboring supernova remnants may share the same origin. (Image credit: M. Michailidis et al. 2026)Earlier work had already shown that IC 443 interacts with the same cloud, which implies that both remnants sit at roughly the same distance from Earth. To rule out coincidence, the researchers simulated 1 million hypothetical binary star systems and calculated how often two unrelated remnants would wind up this close together purely by chance. Depending on the method used, the odds came out to somewhere between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 100. In other words, it's highly likely that the two supernova remnants are related.The team also estimated when each star likely exploded, finding that the two blasts were probably separated by tens of thousands of years. That finding is consistent with one star in a binary pair going supernova first, with its companion following suit long afterward.RELATED STORIESAstronomers spot 'time-warped' supernovas whose light both has and hasn't reached EarthScientists mapped the shape of a supernova for the first time ever ‪—‬ and it's not what we expected: Space photo of the weekThis bright star will soon die in a nuclear explosion — and could be visible in Earth's daytime skiesRather than relying purely on computer models, astronomers can use this real-world system to test long-standing theories about how massive binary stars live, interact and eventually explode. Michailidis said the team's next step is to search for similar binary remnant pairs elsewhere in the galaxy, to understand why this system has stood alone until now. He pointed to one particular payoff: Measuring the distance between two remnants' explosion centers can reveal how much energy a supernova actually released — a quantity that, until now, astronomers could only estimate from theory. "Now we can actually test it," he said.
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The Chicxulub asteroid brought the age of the dinosaurs to an endROGER HARRIS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYThe asteroid strike 66 million years ago caused a planetary-scale firestorm that burned dinosaurs to a crisp all over the world, according to simulations of the impact.The so-called Chicxulub asteroid, which was 10 to 15 kilometres wide, landed in what is today the Gulf of Mexico at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Read more Why dinosaurs lived much more complex lives than we thoughtUntil now, it has been thought that most of the worst effects of heat and fires would have been relatively regional, and global extinctions were mainly caused by a “nuclear winter”, where dust blocks out the sun causes dramatic cooling. Advertisement if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mid-article-slot" } ); }Brandon Johnson at Purdue University, Indiana, and his colleagues analysed geological observations and impact simulations in the laboratory, which showed around five times more material was vaporised by the strike than previously thought.The new work suggests that in the aftermath of the impact, a plume of rock vapour was blasted tens of thousands of kilometres into space and ended up being distributed high above the entirety of the planet. Free newsletter Sign up to The Earth Edition Sign up to newsletter“After the impactor first strikes the Earth, it only takes about a second for much of the kinetic energy to be converted to heat, vaporising over 1000 cubic kilometres of rock,” says Johnson. Just seconds later, the vapour plume expanded above much of Earth’s atmosphere into space, he says, leading to both dust and glassy, metallic beads called spherules, condensing from the vapour.This immense vapour cloud ultimately turned into 1.6 trillion tonnes of dust, which blanketed the planet, sealing in heat, the study found. Meanwhile, the heavier spherules slammed back into the atmosphere.“As this material re-enters the atmosphere over the coming hours, friction decelerates and heats the spherules, creating an approximately hour-long pulse of thermal radiation,” says Johnson.“This would kill off creatures that were unable to shelter from it and was intense enough to ignite forest litter like grass and pine needles and may have even been enough to ignite trees.” Read more Dinosaur-killing asteroid impact site stayed hot for millions of yearsThe geologic record suggests the ensuing fires may have lasted for years and would have been reminiscent of the bushfires currently gripping Europe, except on a global scale, he says.“The Cretaceous animals would have received 17 times the dose of thermal radiation that is 100 per cent lethal to humans,” says Johnson. “That should be enough to kill off even thick-skinned dinosaurs.”Craig O’Neill at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia says the study shows that the dust layer encircling the planet was essentially opaque to infrared and visible light, trapping the heat.“Every joule of heat created by incoming spherules is turned into a thermal pulse that bakes the surface of the Earth,” says O’Neill. “For about 30 minutes, the land is turned into history’s largest barbecue.”However, this isn’t the whole story, he says. For example, life in the oceans was also badly affected by the event, driving many marine animals such as mosasaurs and ammonites extinct. This is better explained by the effects of a nuclear winter blocking out the sun on photosynthesising organisms, rather than an atmospheric thermal pulse, says O’Neill.  “We tend to think of mass extinction events as a murder mystery – if we can just find the murder weapon, we could solve the case. But mass extinctions seem more like a cascading system of failures,” he says.Journal Reference: Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences DOI: 10.1029/2026JG009837
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The ice floe cracks up around the EnduranceRoyal Geographical SocietyAfter the British ship Endurance (pictured above) became stuck in an ice sheet in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica in January 1915, the expedition’s official photographer, Frank Hurley, made a brave decision. He waded into the icy water filling the lower deck to rescue hundreds of his precious glass-plate photo negatives.To Hurley’s dismay, Ernest Shackleton, the expedition leader, informed him he would have to abandon most of the negatives because they would weigh down their escape lifeboats. Hurley went through the plates one by one and smashed 400 of them on the ice before he could change his mind and risk his life to return for them, salvaging 120.Hurley also had to relinquish most of his photography equipment and rely on a pocket camera and a few rolls of film to capture the crew’s fight for survival as they camped on the ice near their trapped ship for months. “It is beyond conception, even to us, that we are dwelling on a colossal ice raft, with but five feet of ice separating us from 2,000 fathoms of ocean, and drifting along under the caprices of wind and tides, to heaven knows where,” wrote Hurley in his diary. Advertisement if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mid-article-slot" } ); }The expedition’s sledge dogs are given their first exercise in a month on 6 January 1915, after the Endurance manages to anchor to a large floeRoyal Geographical SocietyThe Endurance sank for good in November 1915. After months camped on the ice, in April 1916, Hurley and the rest of the crew took his fragile photo negatives and remaining supplies on lifeboats to the uninhabited Elephant Island. From there, realising there was little chance of rescue, Shackleton and five men took the James Caird lifeboat (pictured below) on a perilous journey of 1200 kilometres across the Southern Ocean to seek rescue in South Georgia, eventually rescuing the men (including Hurley) who had remained on Elephant Island in August 1916.Ernest Shackleton and five men leave Elephant Island on the James Caird, aiming to travel 1200 kilometres to South GeorgiaRoyal Geographical SocietyWhile stranded on the ice sheet in the Weddell Sea, Hurley proved to be a hardy survivor, fashioning a blubber stove from an old drum and eating the expedition’s sledge dogs when food supplies ran short. Pictured below is Leonard Hussey lifting the largest sledge dog, Samson.Expedition member Leonard Hussey with sledge dog SamsonRoyal Geographical SocietyHurley, an Australian photographer, was recruited for the expedition to Antarctica after Shackleton saw a film he had made of Douglas Mawson’s earlier Australasian Antarctic Expedition, for which he was also the official photographer. Unfortunately, the Shackleton expedition never succeeded in crossing the Antarctic continent.Now, the UK’s Royal Geographical Society, in collaboration with Shackleton’s granddaughter and others, has published The Endurance Photographs (Riverside Press), a compilation of Hurley’s images that survived. It features the original glass-plate negatives alongside new, high-definition scans that uncover previously hidden faces and details, such as in the image below. Digitisation of the negative revealed a sixth crew member, hidden behind the smoke from the stove.A sixth crew member appeared behind the smoke when this negative of Hurley’s was digitised in 2015Royal Geographical Society“The survival of these negatives through such a journey in such conditions to reach the safety of the Royal Geographical Society’s collections is extraordinary,” says the society’s president, Jane Francis, in the book. “[Hurley’s] images are an example of documentary photography at its finest. He was committed to his craft and would often put himself in danger to create the perfect image. Each of his negatives is not just a visual record of a particular moment, but a beautifully composed, carefully considered piece of art.”
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Earth was once covered by a global magma ocean, which later cooled and crystallised – now traces of this primordial event have been found in magma from a young volcano in the Indian Ocean
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The landscape in the North Pole Dome crater in Western AustraliaCurtin UniversityA huge crater in Western Australia was created by an asteroid strike 3 billion years ago, according to a mineral-dating technique. This would make it the oldest impact crater on Earth – but other researchers have questioned its proposed age. The North Pole Dome crater, also known as the Miralga impact structure, was first described by Chris Kirkland at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, and his colleagues in 2025. They estimated that it could be up to 100 kilometres wide. Advertisement if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mid-article-slot" } ); } Read more Towering structures in Earth’s depths may be billions of years oldKirkland and his team found a layer of rock containing cone-shaped features called shatter cones, which form only after a high-impact event, such as an asteroid strike. Their original study didn’t directly date this rock, but based on correlations with dated rocks in the layers above and below, they proposed that the impact was 3.47 billion years old. This would make it more than 1.2 billion years older than the Yarrabubba crater in the south of the state, which is regarded as the oldest reliably dated asteroid-strike crater on Earth. It would also make it the only known impact from the Archaean aeon, a time when the entire planet was a giant but inhospitable water world. However, another team, including Aaron Cavosie, also at Curtin University, strongly contested the 3.47-billion-year date. Based on their own analysis of rocks in the area, the team members argue that the impact took place no earlier than 2.77 billion years ago. Free newsletter Sign up to The Earth Edition Sign up to newsletterNow, Kirkland and his colleagues say they have successfully dated recrystallised minerals at the crater site, which contain shatter cones. “We have now actually looked inside the rocks and tried to find minerals that directly responded to impact in the rock itself, rather than making correlations,” says Kirkland. Using the rate of the decay of uranium into lead, the team dated zircons within the shatter cones, which recrystallised as a result of the force of the asteroid strike. They also dated the mineral apatite, which would have formed in the hydrothermal system created by the heat of the impact. Both the apatite and the zircons returned dates of around 3.02 billion years old, says Kirkland. “So now we’ve got evidence for very hot water percolating through the rocks 3 billion years ago and also evidence for this really unusual heating and recrystallisation process,” he says. Rocks in the North Pole Dome craterCurtin UniversityKirkland says no other known process, such as mountain building or regional metamorphism, easily explains the mineral changes inside the shocked rocks, because there is no evidence that the area was heated or deformed by those processes at about 3.02 billion years ago. “The only process really that we can link to these mineralogical changes is an impact,” he says. “So that means the best evidence now is a 3-billion-year-old impact, and that by far is the oldest impact crater on the planet.” Cavosie welcomes the fact that the age of the crater has been revised significantly, but he thinks Kirkland’s team is still overestimating the crater’s age. “While I’m relieved these authors have backed off their 2025 ‘3.5-billion-year impact’ hypothesis, I don’t think they’ve presented a compelling case for a [3.02-billion-year] impact either,” says Cavosie. “The slow march of science towards the truth thus continues.” Cavosie says there are clearly shatter cones in younger rocks that are only 2.77 billion years old, which means the impact must have happened after this date. Read more These rocks are probably the last remains of Earth’s early crustAlec Brenner at Yale University, who was also part of the group that critiqued the original study, agrees with Cavosie that the rocks must be younger than 2.77 billion years. “While the new study dismisses this observation because these rocks ‘have not been dated’, they are straightforwardly correlated to nearby rocks that have been dated,” says Brenner. Kirkland says the key difference is that his team has now directly dated minerals inside the shocked rocks. “The younger age argument still depends on long-distance correlation of undated rocks, largely from satellite-based mapping rather than direct geochemistry or geochronology,” he says. “We now have two mineral clocks from the impact rocks themselves giving the same age. That is why direct dating matters.”Journal reference: Geology DOI: 10.1130/G54866.1
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The fishing port of Kesennuma, Japan, in the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake in 2011Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty ImagesAround 15 minutes after the magnitude-9 Tohoku earthquake on 11 March 2011, almost the whole of Japan jumped half a centimetre to the east. This lurch resulted from an immensely powerful seismic wave that travelled 5800 kilometres to the planet’s core and then bounced back towards the surface. In the context of the devastation caused by the earthquake, including localised land movements of many metres and 40-metre tsunami waves that led to the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, 5 millimetres may seem insignificant. Read more Towering structures in Earth’s depths may be billions of years oldBut this movement took place over a distance of 3000 kilometres, nearly seven times longer than the length of the earthquake’s main rupture line and longer than any slip ever recorded. Advertisement if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mid-article-slot" } ); }What also makes the case unusual is the timing and the pattern, says Sunyoung Park at the University of Chicago. “We see a small 5-millimetre eastward step that happens nearly simultaneously and with similar size across almost all of Japan, without any ordinary earthquake at that exact time.” Not only was the shift immense in its north-south extent, but its width encompassed all of Japan and beyond, into the ocean. “It is not just a narrow ‘edge’ that moved,” says Park. “The eastward step extends at least across the whole of Japan where we have GPS stations. If we had similarly dense instruments on the seafloor, we could say more precisely how far offshore this motion extends, but on land, the shift is observed pretty much everywhere across Japan.” Free newsletter Sign up to The Earth Edition Sign up to newsletterBy analysing extensive GPS and seismic data recorded during the catastrophe, Park and her colleagues have figured out how such a phenomenally vast movement was triggered and why the rupture took place 15 minutes after the main quake. Earthquakes often generate waves that travel deep into Earth’s interior and reflect off the core, but they usually become quite weak by the time they have travelled to the planet’s centre and then back up. Read more We are finally getting to grips with how plate tectonics startedIn Tohoku’s case, the main shock was so large that the original wave, though weakened, remained powerful enough on its return to the surface to cause the nationwide lurch, as four adjoining tectonic plates moved in unison. “We think the vigorous shaking from the original Tohoku earthquake might have already weakened the plate boundaries, making them more susceptible to be moved when the core-reflected wave came by,” says Park. The event demonstrates there are previously unrecognised mechanisms of destruction that can follow earthquakes, says Park. “It shows that, after a big earthquake, we might also need to be aware of potential seismic hazards due to such deep-travelling wave arrivals that can trigger more events, and over very large distances.” More research is now needed to understand the implications of this kind of movement for other parts of the world with similar faults, says Robin Lee at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. “It shows that large earthquakes can trigger widespread, delayed fault motion minutes later, and over much larger regions than expected,” says Lee.Journal reference: Science DOI: 10.1126/science.aec4190
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Fossil of Austronaga minuta, a marine predator from the Triassic PeriodWei WangA tiny, long-necked marine predator that lived 245 million years ago is the oldest reptile ever found with an intact digestive system.The exquisitely preserved fossil, including almost the entire skeleton as well as the stomach, liver and intestines, was found in Yunnan province in China in 2023 and is named Austronaga minuta. Read more The shocking fossils that show T. rex wasn’t the king of the dinosaursEven blood vessels and the scales of a partially digested fish meal are visible in the remains. Advertisement if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mid-article-slot" } ); }“A fossil this age with such clear preservation of its organs is really a world treasure,” says John Long at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, who wasn’t involved in the research.Austronaga dates back to the Triassic Period, when dinosaurs first evolved, but it isn’t a dinosaur. It belongs to a broader group called archosaurs, which includes dinosaurs, birds and crocodiles, but not other famous marine reptiles like mosasaurs or ichthyosaurs. Free newsletter Sign up to The Earth Edition Sign up to newsletterThe archosaurs were incredibly diverse in the Triassic and included “all kinds of interesting and strange-looking reptiles”, says Stephan Spiekman at the Natural History Museum Stuttgart, Germany, a member of the team that analysed the fossil. Only later, during the Jurassic and beyond, did they become more restricted, mostly being limited to dinosaurs, including birds, and crocodiles.This specimen is a mere 60 centimetres in length, but as it is the only known example and the reptile’s age at death is unknown, it is impossible to say whether the species grew larger, says Spiekman.Illustration of Austronaga minutaGabriel UguetoHowever, he is confident that it was unlikely to have reached the size of its very long relative Dinocephalosaurus, the “Chinese sea dragon”, which could easily grow to over 4 metres.“This was certainly a good and agile swimmer, mainly using its tail for swimming, its long front flippers for steering and its long neck to catch fish,” says Spiekman. “Austronaga probably would have looked a little like a lizard or a croc trying to be a seal or an otter and likely would have had scaly skin, for example.”The fossil shows that the basic plan of the reptilian digestive tract has changed little in 245 million years, he says, and the “straight and simple intestines is what we see in most modern predatory reptiles, including those eating fish”.Although the fossil is of high quality, the internal organs of Austronaga are only preserved in two dimensions. This is unlike those of a 380-million-year-old fossil of an armoured fish that Long and his colleagues described in 2022, which is regarded as having the oldest known organs of any vertebrate.“But this is still an incredibly well-preserved fossil,” he says.Journal Reference: Science Advances DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeb7528
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A larva of the Magelona worm, just 2 mm in sizeJulian Cremona“Most people are completely unaware of what is in the water,” says Julian Cremona, a naturalist and photographer who is out to change that with his new book Seashore Plankton.Plankton is an umbrella term for all kinds of different organisms floating in our waters, from plants, known as phytoplankton, to animals, known as zooplankton. They can be as little as 0.02 micrometres, the size of some viruses, or as big as 2 metres, the size of a large jellyfish. What they have in common is that they aren’t powerful enough to overcome the movement of water, unlike organisms that can resist the current. As Cremona writes, plankton are “drifting organisms that are unable to determine their long-term direction and are at the whims of the current”.Cremona’s book is a guide to the different types of plankton found along the British coast, such as the larva of a Magelona worm, just 2 millimetres in size, in the main image. To take this photograph, Cremona fitted objective lenses from an old microscope to his camera. Advertisement if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mid-article-slot" } ); }Below is a shot of a tiny zooplankter, Oikopleura. Its body is made up of a trunk on top of a long tail, ranging from a few millimetres to a centimetre long. It has a lifespan of five to six days, over which it grows, reproduces and finally dies.An Oikopleura plankterJulian CremonaSome larger plankton are shown below, including a handful of compass jellyfish (Chrysaora hysoscella), which are mostly found in northern Europe. The umbrella of this jellyfish can stretch to 30 centimetres in diameter, and it uses its 24 tentacles to catch its food: small fish, crabs and other jellyfish.Compass jellyfishKenny van RoosbroekPictured below is a swarm of moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita), the most common jellyfish to be found in the UK’s waters.Moon jellyfishMichal MikulecSome phytoplankton exhibit symbiosis with jellyfish and sea anemones, such as the aptly named snakelocks anemone (Anemonia viridis), pictured below. Single-celled Symbiodinium plankton live within the tissue of its green tentacles, where they perform photosynthesis and provide their host with carbohydrates. In return, the plankton receive inorganic carbon, nitrogen, phosphate – and a protected refuge in which to live.Plankton has a symbiotic relationship with this snakelocks anemoneJulian Cremona
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The remains of an orca-sized ichthyosaur include evidence of what it ate – before it too got eaten by an even bigger marine predator
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The jaguar, known as Gaspar, having his GPS collar fittedLeandro SilveiraA male jaguar has made an unprecedented trek, skirting 2100 kilometres of the southern edge of the Amazon rainforest. The journey – which crossed highways, farms, ranches and other human-modified landscapes – expands our knowledge of what these big cats are capable of.The previous dispersal record for a tagged jaguar was about 60 to 100 kilometres, says Jon Morant at University College Dublin in Ireland. Knowing these animals are capable of travelling much longer distances reveals further challenges in protecting them. “Individuals that are travelling so far are more exposed to human-related risks like hunting or killing because of attacks on livestock,” says Morant. Read more Jaguar breaks records by swimming at least 1.3 kilometresHe and his colleagues have been tracking jaguars in Brazil via GPS collars as part of a larger ongoing project that started in 1999. The researchers wanted to better understand how jaguars use their environments along the Araguaia river, a potential wildlife corridor connecting the Cerrado grasslands with the Amazon. Advertisement if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mid-article-slot" } ); }They captured the male, dubbed Gaspar, as part of this work, fitting him with a collar on 11 November 2024. The 8-year-old jaguar then spent some time in his established range, about 700 square kilometres along the Araguaia river, before setting out on a massive southward trek, skirting the border of the Amazon to inland Cerrado. Subscriber-only newsletter Sign up to Editor’s Highlights Sign up to newsletterThe researchers recorded that Gaspar travelled 2122 kilometres, until his collar stopped transmitting locations in late Novemeber 2025, but that is as the crow flies. The actual distance is probably much more, says Morant.While Gaspar mostly stuck to forested areas, he also crossed through heavily modified human landscapes, such as farms, ranches and roads. Dispersals, albeit shorter ones, are common in individuals aged 1 to 3 years old that are looking to establish a new territory, but it is unclear why an older adult like Gaspar made this move. He might have been searching for better food resources, mating opportunities or a better habitat in general, says Morant. A three-legged lion has learned to hunt in a completely unexpected way Jacob, an 11-year-old lion, has defied expectations by surviving for years after losing a leg – now we know his success is down to an innovative hunting strategy“Beyond the extraordinary distance travelled, I find [it] especially intriguing that he apparently did not establish a territory despite more than a year of continuous movement through areas that were, at least in part, potentially suitable for jaguars,” says José Jiménez at the Spanish National Research Council.The findings also reveal an additional challenge in protecting such wide-ranging cats. In these human-modified areas, jaguars face threats from poaching, as ranchers often kill them to protect livestock. “Maybe we need to rethink how protected areas are framed and organised,” says Morant.Gaspar’s fate is now uncertain. He may have been shot or poisoned, or the collar may have just stopped working, says Morant, which could mean Gaspar is still traversing the Brazilian landscape.Journal reference: Ecology DOI: 10.1002/ecy.70441 Jaguar and wildlife adventure in the Pantanal: Brazil Explore the Pantanal on an intimate expedition, encountering jaguars, giant river otters and rich birdlife across the world’s largest tropical wetland. Find out more
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A dress made from living fungiKe LiA parasitic fungus that grows on caterpillars has been turned into a dress designed to be able to repair itself if damaged.In the video game and TV series The Last of Us, Cordyceps fungi evolve to infect humans and turn them into zombies, but in reality they are harmless to humans. Read more How our ancestors used mushrooms to change the course of human historyUsing the fungus Cordyceps militaris as a base, Ke Li at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and her colleagues created a living textile that can be “programmed” with different properties using various microbial components. Advertisement if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mid-article-slot" } ); }It feels denser and less fibrous than cotton, says Li, and is closer to a soft, non-woven sheet or a flexible leather-like material.“After washing and processing, the material does not have a strong mushroom-like smell,” she says. “A slight biological or fermentation-related odour may be detectable in freshly prepared samples, but this can be greatly reduced through cleaning, drying and post-treatment.” Free newsletter Sign up to The Earth Edition Sign up to newsletterThe fungus is made up of thin filaments known as hyphae. Li and her colleagues first grew the fungus as small, spherical pellets in liquid culture, then washed them and placed them into moulds where they formed a sheet.To prevent the resulting textile from becoming brittle, it was soaked in glycerol, which acts as a “plasticiser”, making the naturally rigid fungal structure softer and more flexible.“We do not use a conventional fabric, polymer mesh or other external supporting scaffold,” says Li. “The Cordyceps militaris mycelial pellets themselves serve as the structural building blocks, and their intertwined hyphae form a continuous, self-supporting sheet.”To add colour to the material, the team introduced yeast cells that were engineered to produce orange, blue and purple pigments. “These cells can be applied to the fungal textile so that the colour is generated biologically, rather than through conventional synthetic dyes,” says Li.The researchers also showed they could change the properties of the textile by adding other fungi, for example making it clean itself by repelling water droplets. For UV protection, they added Aspergillus niger, a mould that commonly grows on fruit and vegetables. This forms a dark layer on the surface of the material containing melanin pigment, which absorbs ultraviolet radiation. Read more How our ancestors invented clothing and transformed it into fashionIf the textile is damaged, then fresh, wet fungal pellets can be applied to the area that needs repair and the fungus simply grows over the breach.Under dry conditions, most biological activity is greatly reduced, and the cells may remain inactive or dormant, says Li.But under humid conditions with nutrients present, some cells can become active again. This latent biological capacity is what enables functions such as regrowth and repair, and also means that the material is readily biodegradable, showing near-complete visible degradation in soil after just over 40 days.Li and her colleagues created a dress out of their fungal material, but so far no one has worn it. “We’ve treated it as a rather precious display piece, and it was made in a small size,” she says. “Perhaps next time we should find a few petite and adventurous volunteers to try it on and see how it looks in motion.”Justin Beardsley at the University of Sydney, Australia, says the biodegradability of the dress is amazing compared with what we currently have in terms of getting rid of waste from fast fashion.But that is also a drawback because you don’t really want to be wearing something that is too easily biodegradable, as “it’ll break down while you’re wearing it”, he says.As the textile is alive, Beardsley envisages one day being able to change its qualities in real time. “If there was some way that you can make it water-repellent for a while, becoming less breathable during rain, that would be fantastic, and then you can revert to the more breathable, less water-repellent version afterward,” he says.Journal reference: Science Advances: DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aed6937
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A fossil overlooked for nearly 80 years has revealed a previously unknown crocodile relative that lived 210 million years ago in what is now New Mexico. Named Eosphorosuchus lacrimosa, the jackal-sized predator had a reinforced skull, powerful jaw muscles, and a short snout built for tackling larger prey.
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As Mohenjo-daro prospered, the gap between its richest and poorest households actually shrank. Its shared infrastructure, fair trade systems, and lack of powerful royal elites suggest that equality may have helped fuel the ancient city’s success.
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A new analysis has precisely dated paintings in France’s Font-de-Gaume cave for the first time. Scientists discovered charcoal inside black pigments once thought to contain only minerals, allowing them to use radiocarbon dating. The results show that a bison was painted about 13,000 years ago, while sections of a mask-like figure were added during several widely separated periods.
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Early humans in England crafted a rare piece of elephant bone into a reusable hammer for sharpening stone tools nearly 500,000 years ago. The extraordinary find reveals that ancient toolmakers were resourceful, skilled, and capable of surprisingly advanced planning.
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A newly identified fossil ape from northern Egypt is reshaping ideas about where the ancestors of modern apes first emerged. Analyses place it closer to living apes than any known East African species of the same age, pointing to North Africa and the Middle East as a possible birthplace and crossroads for the ape lineage that eventually produced gibbons, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans.
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Songbirds appear to have evolved through rare explosions of change separated by long periods of slower development. Many of those bursts lined up with major climate shifts, suggesting that environmental upheaval can reshape life in powerful ways.
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Deep beneath submarine volcanoes, Earth may be running a natural “gold kitchen.” By analyzing volcanic glass from the Kermadec island arc north of New Zealand, researchers found that water-rich mantle repeatedly melts beneath subduction zones, gradually concentrating gold in rising magma. The process works because intense melting breaks down sulfur-rich minerals that normally trap gold, releasing the metal into the melt.
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A weakening Atlantic current could supercharge California’s atmospheric rivers while leaving Greenland with fewer snow-producing storms. The changes could raise flood risks, strain infrastructure, and reshape water supplies far beyond the Atlantic.
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Bumblebees naturally have short lives, but extreme heat and human activity are making survival harder. Pesticides can poison bees or destroy the flowers they depend on, while habitat loss leaves them with fewer safe places to live and feed. Protecting native plants and using fewer chemicals could help these vital pollinators recover.
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Giant sequoias are built to withstand ordinary fires, but recent extreme wildfires killed thousands of trees that had survived for centuries or even millennia. A new analysis of about 26,400 sequoias found that trees in areas treated with prescribed burns were nearly four times more likely to survive. Researchers estimate the controlled fires prevented about 1,900 deaths and could have saved thousands more if used across every grove.
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